


Clockwork

by TurtleTotem



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Fanart, M/M, Magic, Steampunk, True Love's Kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-05
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-06 14:02:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 7,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6757087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TurtleTotem/pseuds/TurtleTotem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Manikins are illegal abominations, life created from clockwork and the arcane arts. This one is falling apart, and it's both a mercy and a duty for Erik to destroy it.</p><p>“My name is Charles,” the manikin says. “And I don’t want to die.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was first inspired by the artwork of the amazing [Thacmis](thacmis.tumblr.com), who then gifted me with more sketches as bribery for me to continue writing! You can find this first tiny chapter (art and text) [on Tumblr](http://turtletotem.tumblr.com/post/137999639936/thacmis-some-fantasy-sci-fi-steampunk-au-cherik).

He was nothing more than a doll, a porcelain face and ball-joint body animated by some unholy amalgamation of clockwork and the arcane arts. Things like him were illegal, forbidden, and Erik Lehnsherr—as a member of the Overseers' Council—was duty-bound to destroy him.

It would be a mercy, he told himself. Life was never meant to persist so long in such a fragile vessel. The doll's porcelain was cracking, the spells that operated its eyes sparking and decaying; a hood hid the places his hair had worn away. If he was capable of feelings at all, he could only be suffering. Erik could at least end it quickly.

"My name is Charles," the doll said, and his voice is as warm and alive as any human being's, strained with emotion. "And I don't want to die."

Erik's staff fell from fingers gone nerveless, the mage-light dying from its runes. He couldn't move. _He couldn't move_.

"I won't hurt you, Erik Lehnsherr," said the doll, low and intent. Its uneven steps clicked and whined as it stalked closer; there was something wrong with its legs. "But neither will I allow you to hurt me. Do you understand?"

Erik found he had just enough mobility to nod.

"Good. My sister and I require shelter. And you, metal-mage and member of the Overseers' Council, are going to give it to us."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alas, no sketches for this chapter, but there will be some for the next!

Erik locked the doors and snatched the curtains closed. He still wasn't sure how these abominations got into his house, but if he was caught harboring them, that would be the end of his career and no mistake.

"I would think it's to your advantage, then," Charles said, "to help us on our way quickly."

It wasn't the first time the manikin had seemed to hear something Erik didn't say aloud, and he still couldn't explain what force compelled him to let these atrocities into his home—but the obvious answer is flatly impossible. Manikins could not wield magic. The idea was absurd.

"What do you need, then," Erik said, instead of dwelling on the impossible, "to go on your way quickly? What could you possibly need from me?" After all, manikins required no food, no drink—better clothing, perhaps, to hide their inhuman forms?

"Repairs," Charles said.

Of course. Erik had already noted that Charles's body was on the verge of falling apart, and the quick glimpse he'd caught of the "sister" as she slipped past him included spell-decay in the eyes similar to Charles's, and a great deal of wear and damage to the face, so that something blue—an old masquerade mask?—showed through.

"Well, you already know I'm a metal-mage," Erik said. "I suppose you've come to the right place."

_It will be easy enough_ , he thought, _to destroy instead of repair_. Problem solved for everyone.

Charles held his gaze intently for a moment; Erik resisted the urge to fidget under that inhuman stare, eyes made of jewel facets, clockwork and the dark residue of dying spells. Then he—it—nodded and moved toward the parlor that doubled as Erik's workroom.

"Have a seat," Erik said, nodding at a mostly-cleared bench as he gathered tools and materials. "And take all that off. I need to see what I'm dealing with."

Erik watched as Charles carefully disrobed, his movements erratic; again there was that distressed click-whine from his legs. To Erik's surprise, Charles left on a pair of short cotton drawers. Modesty from a manikin? What did it think it was hiding? Manikins weren't given the, one might say, fully functional parts of a man. Why would they be?

"I'll need to do a thorough examination before I can repair anything," Erik said, and started with the manikin's legs.

His first shock came the moment he touched them. To all appearances, they were fairly standard limbs for this sort of doll, carved wood with intricate ball joints for the most natural movement, painted a pale skin-pink. But unlike every other manikin Erik had ever encountered, this one was warm to the touch, just as if the wood were flesh. Erik's hands jerked back—but he forced them forward again, because it had to just be ambient warmth from Charles being outside in the sun.

_It's winter_ , some part of his mind observed, but he shushed it.

The legs themselves were a bit battered, but sound; he tested the joints, rotating ankle and knee, and heard none of the straining stress-noise until he pushed one leg upward toward the chest.

"The problem isn't your legs at all," Erik realized, "it's up here, where your hips connect to your spine…" Instinctively he touched, one hand on Charles's hip, the other still on his knee, and in a sudden flash became aware of the intimacy of their position—Erik kneeling at the manikin's feet, his breath brushing its belly. He could almost swear he aw the skin there shiver, which was absurd since there _was_ no skin there, only paint over a wooden block of torso. Erik swallowed and pulled away, getting back to his feet.

"That's going to be tricky to repair," he said, and noted that it would also probably be his best chance to do his job and shut down this abomination permanently. "Any problems with your arms or hands?"

"No," Charles said, looking down and examining his own delicate, intricately-articulated fingers as if he'd never seen them before. "My hands were replaced just a couple of years ago, they ought to be fine."

Erik stared. "How old… That is, how long… When were you created?"

"Twenty years ago, give or take."

"That's not possible."

Charles rolled his eyes, sparks flying off his lashes. "Don't ask me questions if you're just going to disregard my answers."

Had Erik ever even heard of a manikin getting snippy when questioned? "You're not like any manikin I've ever encountered."

And Charles _laughed_ , black and complicated. "No, I imagine not."

"That's what I mean," Erik said urgently. "You laughed just now. But not because you were happy. Complex emotion, that's not… manikins can't _do_ that. They seldom feel true emotion at all, they're not alive except in the strictest terms, and they don't last very long—whatever energy has been gathered to animate them loses cohesion and fades away within… months at best. That's one reason they're illegal; it's cruel, to bring something to life so briefly."

"Oh," Charles breathed, "no, Erik, the true cruelty is making it _last_."


	3. Chapter 3

Erik wound gold alloy through the maze of cracks in Charles's face, half-consciously raising a hand to direct it as his magic bound metal to porcelain. This would be by far the quickest and easiest of the repairs Charles needed; Erik told himself he was doing it now to placate the manikin, lull him into a sense of trust and security, and not because of the way Charles winced whenever he tried to smile.

"That feels so much better," Charles murmured, reaching up to touch the new vein of gold down his cheek.

"Don't touch it yet." Erik caught Charles's hand, then reached past it to brush fingers along his jawline and tilt his face toward the light.

Erik froze there, Charles's fingertips still faintly brushing his wrist, utterly arrested by the discovery of a pulse beneath that jawline.

The stillness of the moment seemed unbreakable, Erik hardly daring to breathe. He'd come much further into Charles's space than he intended, close enough to feel the impossible ambient warmth of his false skin, close enough to smell sandalwood and the dark spice of old magic. The pulse beneath his fingertips quickened, Charles returning his stare with what might be either terror or a strange joy, faint sparks swimming in the blue-black swirl of his eyes.

"You have a heartbeat," Erik said at last, hoarse and breathless.

"Yes," Charles whispered. "Because I'm alive."

Erik stepped back, fingers twitching and tingling as he curled them into a fist. "This is… Charles, I would swear you're not a manikin at all, except that I can _see_ you are with my own eyes!"

"You really don't know," Charles said with a faint smile, and it's already clear how much more expressive his face will be now that he's not afraid of cracking. "My sister thought surely you must—the fortunate son, the protégé, given everything and permitted to live, to _leave_ …"

"Know what?" Erik snapped, because this situation was swiftly losing all similarity to anything he was prepared to deal with. "What is it I'm supposed to know?"

Charles stepped forward, spine protesting, gold veins gleaming beautiful in his face, and took Erik's hand in both of his. Erik pulled away, startled at the feeling of something sharp-edged pressing into his palm, but it wasn't a weapon or an attack spell. Merely a chess piece—the black king, chipped and dirty and very old.

Memories, untouched for decades, flooded in like seawater to steal his breath. A little boy with bright blue eyes, laughter and warm fingers interlaced with his own, patient attempts to teach him the rules of a game that the head nurse of the orphanage insisted they were too young to play.

And then an empty bed beside his in the cold dormitory, nurses that refused to meet his eyes.

"They told me you died," Erik choked.

Charles smiled, sadder than Erik had ever seen, and pressed Erik's hand to the place where a heart, impossibly, beat in his wooden doll's chest. "I did."

"I was three, perhaps four years old; I think you were a little older. I can barely remember it, but I've held onto those memories as hard as I could." Charles held up the chipped black king. "This helped. Proof that there really was life before—before this." He gestured vaguely at his doll body. "Before Shaw."

Erik felt as if the floor were trying to squirm away from his feet. He fumbled his way into a chair. "Shaw?" He couldn't mean Sebastian Shaw, the wizard who adopted Erik from the orphanage and took him as apprentice—

"Yes, Sebastian Shaw," Charles said gently. "He had some sort of arrangement with the orphanage—children listed as dead and given to him instead. Raven and I were neither the first nor the last, but we were—are—the only survivors. To the extent that you can call us survivors." He rolled the chess piece between his fingers, slow and thoughtful. "The first task he set me, once I was… transferred… to the manikin was the disposal of what had been my body."

Erik felt whispered syllables spilling from his mouth—a mixture of profanity and half-remembered childhood prayers. What Charles was saying … well, it certainly explained his supposed age. A captured human soul would not dissipate like mere gathered energy. But Erik couldn't imagine any such thing being accomplished without the darkest of the dark magics. He'd known Shaw was a terrible man, but—

"Charles, what are you doing?"

The manikin-sister stood on the stairs, which she had slipped up immediately upon entering Erik's house. Erik didn't know what she'd been up to all this time, but she looked—for a startling second, she looked completely human. Then the illusion flickered, revealing a patched-together manikin in tattered clothes; the girl grimaced and swayed on the stairs, gritting her teeth until the illusion returned—long golden hair instead of brittle false red, her face and eyes normally colored, no trace of cracked paint or ball-joints. Glamour magic, Erik thought in awe. The kind of rare skill a mage was either born with or not. That she and Charles both had magic seems undeniable now, and much more plausible with the knowledge of their origin.

"Why are you trusting him?" the girl—Raven, hadn't Charles called her?—demanded, glaring at Charles. "You know what he is."

Charles raised his chin. "A victim of Sebastian Shaw, just like us."

Raven laughed nastily. "Not _quite_ like us."

"It's hardly Erik's fault Shaw chose him to be the… experimental control, the son and heir, whatever it was he wanted him to be."

Raven shook her head and continued down the stairs. "Charles was always your great defender, Erik," she said, stepping uncomfortably close to Erik and narrowing her eyes at him. One eye shivered yellow for a moment before she regained control of the glamour. "The rest of us, we hated you. You were just Little Shaw, the chosen one, running around doing everything we'd never be able to do again."

"It's not true, the others didn't hate you." Charles's fingers curled unexpectedly around Erik's wrist. "Even Raven doesn't hate you, however little she trusts you. There was resentment, sometimes—we were only children. But you were our brother. We were all your brothers and sisters, on the other side of the wall."

A dozen peculiar little details were coming together in Erik's mind—the areas of Shaw's house he was never allowed to go, the noises he would hear sometimes in the middle of the night, comments Shaw would make about his Experiments. Charles and Raven and—how many others—they had been there all that time. And out of all the storm of emotions stealing Erik's breath right now—horror, rage, shock—one front-runner is a strange and powerful grief, that he had never known these other children. That he had thought himself so helplessly, horribly alone in that house, when he could have had brothers and sisters.

"No, you were never alone," Charles said, his eyes shining through their curtain of dying magic. "Whether you knew it or not, Erik, you were never alone."

Erik took Charles's hand from around his wrist, and clutched it as if he were drowning.


	4. Chapter 4

Once Erik looked at Charles's spine with his eyes and not just his magic, it seemed incredible that he was functioning at all, even with a limp. The spine was a dense braid of wires, copper and nickel, silver and gold, that at least in theory connected all the other wires that allowed Charles's body to move. Erik could only assume that spellwork was helping maintain those connections, because the spine was an unholy mess of frayed, twisted and broken wire, slowly tearing itself free of Charles's torso.

"What _happened?"_ Erik blurted, trailing fingertips down the coiled (uncoiling) metal. Charles shivered and shifted away; Erik supposed the area was naturally very sensitive. There was no need for him to feel suddenly awkward and flustered about it.

"Sebastian Shaw happened," Charles said lightly. "He has very poor control of his temper, as I'm sure you recall."

Erik remembered Shaw's temper very well indeed. He had borne enough bruises to have a deeply ingrained flinch from upraised hands, but public visibility had kept Shaw from going too far with his living, acknowledged apprentice. Charles had had no such protection.

"How many times has this been replaced, then?" Erik asked, thumbing at one errant wire.

"Oh, it hasn't been. Spine and eyes, those have to stay original, repaired but not replaced—we discovered that the hard way."

Erik swallowed, trying not to imagine that scenario in too much detail. Instead he turned Charles's head, peering into his eyes. "So these are original, too?" They were so large and bright in his face now— _must have been astonishing when he was a child…_

"Oh, I've been in an adult-sized body ever since… from the beginning," Charles murmured, his breath brushing warm against Erik's skin. "One of the worst parts of the whole thing, really, it was so very disorienting."

"I'm sure it must have been." Erik let his hand fall belatedly away from Charles's face, completely unconscious—until a moment later—of the way the motion formed itself into a comforting caress. He cleared his throat and straightened his back, shifting slightly away. "Let's get this spinal repair going, then. It's going to be very delicate work, and not swift either. Try to be as still as possible."

"Oh, I think you'll find I can be as still as the grave," Charles said dryly, and turned his back entirely to Erik. They were seated on Erik's workbench, which was a tight fit for two, but it would do. Erik took a deep breath, raising a tiny focus-wand in one hand and gathering his metal-magic in the other.

 _Just so you're aware,_ came the voice of Charles's mind-magic inside his head, _I know full well that you could kill me as easily as cure me. And I think you should know that if you so much as form the intention, I will fry your brain like an egg._

Unaccountably, Erik felt himself smile. "I would expect no less."

 

*

 

"Erik, stop," Charles snapped, and though Erik didn't even know how long he'd been drifting in a haze of hyperfocused spellwork, the alarm in Charles's voice was more than enough to shake him out of it. He stilled his hands, stilled the complex dance of braided wire in Charles's spine, and opened his eyes.

Charles lay flat on the workbench in the parlor, clutching at the edges of it as if to anchor himself. He was clearly struggling not to panic, breath coming hard and fast. "Erik. I can't feel my legs."

Erik's stomach went cold, and he dove back into his metal-magic, searching for the lost connection, the broken wire—the mistake that could have killed Charles as easily as shut off his legs. The mistake, he thought with disbelieving horror, that he had  _intended_ to make, a few short days ago—could he have done this deliberately-by-accident, was this his fault—either way it was his fault—

"Erik." Charles's voice was gentle now, though fear and strain still lurked beneath the surface. He reached for Erik's hand, fingers surprisingly warm against Erik's skin. "You didn't do anything on purpose. Remember what I told you?"

Ah, yes. If Erik tried to harm him, he'd be dead before he hit the floor. How peculiar, to take comfort in that now.

"Please," Charles said, voice more strained than before. "Just fix it. You can fix it."

He had to—that was the unspoken part. He had to fix it, because it couldn't be replaced, not without killing Charles.

Erik took a deep breath, closing his eyes and sinking his attention deep into the metal of Charles's spine. He raised one hand, the half-conscious focusing aid he'd always used—the other hand, to his distant surprise, remained entwined with Charles's.

It didn't take him long to find the problem, and he cursed his own stupidity. He had worked on the spine from the top down, repairing and untangling, without paying proper attention to what was happening below his area of focus. All the shifting and pulling above had made things worse than ever below. He didn't think anything was actually broken that hadn't been before, but snagged and pinched, certainly.

And he couldn't repair it, he realized numbly, not tonight. When they'd started, the parlor had been warm with sunlight through the drapes; now stars glimmered in the windows, and he was lightheaded with exhaustion and hunger.

"I'm sorry," Erik said hoarsely. "I'll only make it worse if I try to fix it now."

"Ah." Charles essayed a smile, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Go rest, then. I'll still be here in the morning."

"I'm not leaving you on a workbench all night like a…" _Like an abandoned doll._

"Well, I can hardly go anywhere else."

"There's a cot in the corner, I sleep there if a spell needs overnight supervision or something." More often when he just couldn't be bothered to go upstairs to his bedroom. "I can carry you."

"Erik—" Charles's eyes went wide, sparks flying from his eyelashes, as Erik bent and lifted him into his arms. "You're going to hurt yourself—or _me_ —" Instinctively, he threw his arms tightly around Erik's neck.

"You're not heavy. And my magic helps." It was wrapped securely around every millimeter of the damaged spine now, stabilizing and helping support its weight.

Erik was across the room in four steps, but when he reached the cot, it suddenly became difficult—impossible, really—to move. All he could do was stand there, with Charles in his arms, their faces bare inches apart, flickering light from the fireplace reflecting in the veins of gold in Charles's cheek.

What kind of man even thought of a manikin in the way—in the way Erik was thinking—was _not_ thinking—

The sort of man who was publicly burned by the Overseers for black magic and worse, that was what. But Charles was different in so many ways from the traditional manikin…

 _Making any crimes against him that much the worse,_ Erik told himself, but it was hard to make himself believe it a crime when Charles's fingers were combing through the hair at the nape of his neck…

Erik reminded himself that he was exhausted beyond all sense, and lowered Charles gently onto the cot. Charles sighed as he did—relief? Weariness? Did manikins get weary?

"Do you sleep?" Erik asked, pulling the blanket carefully over him.

"In my fashion. It's more a rest of the mind than of the body, but I do grow unwell without it."

"Sleep well, then." Erik tucked the blanket a little closer around Charles's shoulder and turned to go—only to sway, dizzy with the motion, and nearly fall.

Charles caught his wrist, half-laughing, half-concerned. "Lie down, Erik. Come, don't be an idiot about it."

And somehow Erik found himself beneath the blanket with Charles, the two of them crowded together in the tiny cot, and Erik too tired to keep himself from wrapping his arms around Charles, with fingertips reverently brushing the tangled wires of his spine.

"It's all right," Charles murmured into Erik's hair, stroking again at the nape of his neck. "Sweet dreams, Erik."

"Do you dream?" Erik asked sleepily.

"Yes."

"What does a manikin dream about?"

Charles laid a hand on his cheek, gently, thumb caressing his cheekbone. "I'll tell you someday."

Erik slept.


	5. Chapter 5

In the end, Charles's spine was just too far gone for Erik to entirely fix, not without introducing enough replacement material to possibly kill him. After everything Erik could do, Charles still had a pronounced limp—but at least any further damage was halted, and he was no longer in pain.

Only then did Raven seem to consider Erik trustworthy enough to examine her.

She'd taken over Erik's guest bedroom with fierce territorialism, letting Charles in only occasionally and Erik not at all. He'd barely seen her since her arrival, which was more than a little worrying to Erik.

"She's not up to anything alarming," Charles had insisted, rolling his eyes. "Patching her clothes. Sharpening her weapons. Trying to get her left eye working again."

Now that Raven was finally permitting him entry into his own guest room, Erik surveyed it quickly for these supposed weapons. He didn't have to look far; Raven kept a knife casually in her hand even as she and Erik took seats by the window. When Erik raised an eyebrow, she simply said, "Charles is far too trusting."

"You might consider that Charles has an ability far beyond most, to ascertain someone's true intentions," Erik pointed out, and refrained from adding, _And I have the ability to turn your knife against you without even touching it._ Better to keep that secret until he needed it.

She gazed at him impassively, a perfectly human-looking girl with golden curls and round cheeks.

"Your eye is the problem, isn't it? You'll have to drop the glamour, if you want me to help you."

Raven's mouth tightened, and suddenly an entirely different girl sat before him.

One eye sparked and flickered like her brother's, the white of it going dark with old spellwork. The other had died entirely, solid black and lightless. Her hair was not spun gold, but badly-threaded red wool, as one might find on a cheap doll. And her face—her face had been badly broken at least once, the porcelain shattered and patched back together, partly replaced with what looked like a wing-shaped masquerade mask. There were layers upon layers of paint on it, the fair peach-pink color of the rest of her "skin," but chipped and peeling, refusing to stick to the glossy bright blue material.

"If I wanted people to stare at me, I could have stayed outside," Raven said between her teeth.

"Did Shaw do this?" Erik said, his own teeth clenching as his eyes traveled the spideweb lines of broken porcelain across her face—bonded back together, not with gold as he had done with Charles, but some kind of resin that was already beginning to flake.

"Of course Shaw did this. What did you think had happened to us, a fall down the stairs? Not that that couldn't do it too, I guess. It's all a matter of time, you know, before Charles and I break down and fall apart completely."

Erik hummed thoughtfully at that as he pulled his wand and a few supplies from his bag. "That depends on how you look at it, really. In some ways manikin bodies are stronger than humans—with _proper_ care, the damage you sustain could be fixed much quicker and more thoroughly than my body can heal. You have no need for food or water, little need for rest. Much less sensation of pain."

Raven frowned, whether in reaction to his words or his spell prep he didn't know—but she didn't contradict him.

"You seem to spend a lot of time and effort on your clothes," Erik said, nodding toward the heap of them by the fire—threadbare and tattered, all in a state of being patched or hemmed or repaired in whatever way. "And they're not even necessary. You don't need protection from the elements."

"So I ought to parade naked through town?"

"You could, if you like. Keep your eyes open, now, even if it stings." Erik lit sage, blew the smoke into Raven's blank eye to flush out the dead magic. The blackness cleared away. "After all, modesty is for humans. If society won't consider you human, well, that goes two ways, doesn't it?"

Raven was silent while he ground a few ingredients into a paste, spread it on her blank eye, and readied his wand.

"You forget that I can't afford to be _seen,_ much less make a spectacle of myself," Raven said. "Or folks like you will have me chopped up and burned as living blasphemy."

"That's going to change," Erik said, his voice hard, "if your brother and I have anything to say about it. But in any case, you do have your glamours to protect you when need be. I'm just saying you have nothing to be ashamed of. When a time comes that you decide to let someone—anyone, or everyone—see your face… let them see it. _Make_ them see it, make them face what was done to you and what you are." He took a deep breath, light gathering at the end of his wand. "Now hush and let me focus, if you want that eye back."

A long few spells later, it was done, and the other eye too, both glowing brilliant gold in the dimness of the room. She looked, if anything, less human than she had before—but beautiful, Erik thought, in her own wild way.

"You should probably rest," Erik told her, a little breathless with the amount of magic he'd used. "I certainly plan to."

At the doorway, he heard a noise and turned back, to see Raven dropping her entire pile of dirty, tattered clothes into the fire.

Seeing him, she lifted her chin, as if daring him to comment, and crossed the room to the vanity, where she began peeling the pink paint off her blue mask.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for this very short chapter without sketches -- but it's an important chapter nonetheless!

"I still can't figure how Shaw did it, especially more than once. I can't come up with any spell or web of spells that could even theoretically do what he did." Erik reached for a pawn—reconsidered, moved a rook.

Charles looked up at him through his lashes, amused, the motion setting a few lazy sparks free to drift on the air. "There is more magic in the world, Erik, than is contained in the tidy invisible clockwork of your little spells." He took Erik's rook with his queen. "Sunrise, a child's first laugh, true love's kiss—and darker things, too. Like the spilling of innocent blood."

"Natural magic. I've studied it," Erik said. "Very powerful, yes, but very unpredictable. Spontaneous, uncontrollable, usually impossible to replicate. It does what it does, without regard to the wizard's wishes, sometimes without a wizard's involvement at all."

"Very irritating, to one such as yourself," Charles teased. "Master of magnetism. Overseer of magic itself, or at least its lawful usage. The magic itself will not be overseen, you know."

Erik grumbled and moved his king away from the check Charles was trying to drive it into.

"I don't know how Shaw managed to harness it repeatedly like he did," Charles murmured, staring not so much at the board as through it. "But he won't be doing it again. Ever again."

Erik's eyes widened. "What do you mean by that?"

But Charles just shook his head, and wouldn't make any further answer.


	7. Chapter 7

Just because the Head Overseer was at his door was no reason for Erik to panic. He told himself that again and again as he showed Lord Trask to the sitting room and offered him tea. As an Overseer himself, it wasn't unusual for Erik to be visited by others of the group. Trask himself had been here before—though only as part of a gathering. He'd never taken it upon himself to visit Erik on his own.

That didn't mean there was any reason to panic. Charles and Raven knew better than to venture downstairs when Erik had company; Trask would say whatever he'd come to say, and then leave, none the wiser about the two ridiculously illegal manikins living in Erik's house.

"Tea would be marvelous, thank you," Trask said, as grave and formal as ever, and Erik cursed silently. Now he had to go make tea, leaving Trask alone in the room that doubled as Erik's workroom. Erik didn't _think_ anything in there could be directly traced to the manikins, but he hadn't been as careful as he should have. He so rarely had company…

 _Charles, what can you tell me about our guest's intentions?_ Erik aimed the thought upstairs as he hurried through making tea in the kitchen.

 _I'm afraid to give him more than a glance,_ Charles replied grimly. _A wizard of his skill might very well feel my presence if I go poking around._

Erik poured the tea. It hadn't steeped long enough, leaving it weak and flavorless; good, maybe Trask would leave quicker.

"You've been busy, I can tell," Trask said when Erik returned, nodding around the room as he took his teacup. "I thought you were staying away on purpose, but perhaps you haven't heard."

"Staying away?" Erik said blankly. "Heard about what?"

"About Sebastian Shaw. I know you're not on the best of terms, but most people still expected you to come by. Not that it would make any difference to him." He sipped his tea, grimaced slightly, and set it aside. "You _haven't_ heard, then."

"I don't speak to Shaw anymore," Erik said, setting his jaw. "Did he die? Is that what this is about?" He could feel his pulse picking up speed. Is this what Charles had meant, when he said Shaw wouldn't hurt anyone again?

"No, he's alive, which is probably the greater cruelty," Trask said. He was watching Erik's reactions very, very intently, and Erik felt his palms break out in a sweat. "A sort of… experiment of Shaw's went sour on him. His magic is gone, torn right out of him. Gone forever."

Erik stared.

"The trauma of it has left him… childlike. He doesn't seem fully aware of what's going on around him anymore. He hasn't improved at all in three weeks, so recovery looks unlikely."

Erik let out a sharp, heavy breath, some shocked variation on a laugh. _Won't hurt anyone again, indeed._ He hardly knew what to even feel—except a definite awe of Charles's power. "What sort of 'experiment' could do something like that?" he asked, for form's sake.

Trask was still looking at him steadily, and Erik was abruptly reminded just how powerful this man was, and how many black mages had found themselves on the gallows after underestimating the odd-looking little wizard with the fluffy mustache and owlish spectacles. "Mr. Lehnsherr," he said in his quiet, dry voice, "I have reason to believe you know _exactly_ what kind of experiment Shaw was doing, and how it came to turn on him so disastrously."

"I haven't been involved in my former master's affairs in a long time," Erik said, just as steadily.

"I believe you," Trask said. "And for that reason, I'm willing to… overlook quite a lot, if you choose to be cooperative."

"What are you talking about?" _Charles, get out. You and Raven need to run, right now._

"They came to you," Trask whispered, and Erik's blood ran cold. "They left Shaw's house and came straight to you. Really, what were you supposed to do? The male, I know what he's capable of. Has he been controlling you?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Erik said through numb lips, and eased one hand toward his wand.

"Or did you help them of your own volition? Did you feel sorry for them? I couldn't blame you—I feel it myself, despite what they've done. If it helps, Erik, I've already decided they won't be burned. If you hand them over without a fuss, everyone wins. The dolls live peacefully in my custody. We keep it all quiet."

"And Shaw?"

"There's no point putting him on trial now. Leave his reputation clean, and as his former apprentice you inherit everything the state would have confiscated if the truth were known."

"And what would happen to Ch—the manikins, 'peacefully' in your custody?"

"These two are not the only ones out there—Shaw was teaching his nasty little tricks to his friends. We need to study them, Erik, need to know how they were made, how they work."

Erik had never put any stock in the rumors until this moment—the whispers that Head Overseer Trask used his position to hunt, confiscate and experiment on manikins, as fascinated by them as any of the black mages he sent to the gallows for creating them. Suddenly he could feel in his bones that it was all true.

"If you can't be cooperative," Trask said, and when had his staff appeared in his hand, runes hot and glowing, "then things won't go nearly as well for you."

Erik grabbed for his wand—or tried to, but his hand didn't even have a chance to move before Trask gestured and it froze in place. He opened his mouth to shout—maybe a spell, maybe merely an expletive—only for that to freeze as well. Trask stepped closer, runes burning hotter.

"Tell me where the manikins are."

"Right here," Raven said, and cocked a flintlock pistol against the back of Trask's head.


	8. Chapter 8

"Raven, don't." Charles, Erik saw, was still on the stairs; he had frozen mid-step, almost as thoroughly as Trask had.

"Give me one reason why not," Raven said grimly, not looking away from the pistol pressed against the back of Trask's head. "You know what he's done. What he would do to us, given the chance."

"Yes." Charles eased down a stair, two stairs. "Because he thinks we're animals—less than animals—without thoughts or feelings of our own. We can show him differently."

Raven's face was set in a snarl, golden eyes blazing. "You can concern yourself with the moral high ground all you want, Charles. All I want is to  _live."_

Trask was holding perfectly still, eyes wide, but the runes on his staff had not dimmed. Erik had no doubt he would strike at them the moment he could. At least his control of Erik had failed; Erik moved to stand before him, wand in hand with its tip glowing ominously red.

"Charles," he said, "you don't know this man like I do. He's the most methodical and persistent hunter in the country, and you are his favorite kind of prey."

"Maybe so." Charles was almost close enough to touch Trask now, a realization that seemed to make the Head Overseer shudder. "But there's no need for anyone's death."

"You'll only make things worse for yourselves if you kill me," Trask said, quiet and cool. 

Erik felt his lip curl, but had to say, "He's right. If we kill him, we bring a whole new level of manhunt down on ourselves, and they won't be aiming to capture this time."

"Ugh." The sound was a concession, but Raven hadn't put down the gun yet. "Charles, can you wipe his memory? He can walk away from here with no idea he ever saw us—maybe no idea he ever  _heard_  of us—"

"It's too late for that." Charles's fingertips were at his temple, his mouth grim. "He's told others of his suspicions, put too many things in writing—he'd be back here within an hour."

"Well, that's an hour we can use to get away," Erik said.

"You'll have to run as well." Charles sounded miserable. "Erik, my friend, I'm so sorry to have brought this on you."

"I'm not sorry," Erik said, meeting Charles's eyes and feeling, briefly, as if nothing else in the room mattered.

In his moment of distraction, Trask dropped to the floor, swinging his staff at Erik with the runes blazing. Distracted by the streak of magical fire aimed at him, Erik almost didn't hear Raven's pistol go off; fortunately, the shield he threw up against Trask's attack had enough of his natural magnetic energy to it that the bullet curved harmlessly away.

Unfortunately, between bullet and spell, Erik was still flung back against the wall, dazzled and stunned. Somewhere, Charles was shouting, and for a moment the room  _sang_ with spells, fighting through each other toward their intended targets. Erik forced himself back to his feet and put out a hand, and the bullet pulled itself out of the wall and shot through the top half of Trask's staff, shattering it. Half the spells in the room vanished; the other half slammed into Trask, knocking him to the floor with a cry.

Raven was on him with a snarl, knocking the shattered staff from his hand. Charles rushed forward with one hand still at his temple, and dove to grip Trask's face with the other.

Trask cried out, struggled—and collapsed, eyes closed and body limp as a doll's.

"He'll sleep for hours," Charles said, panting on his hands and knees. "We have to get as far away from here as we can."

"I know a few places we can go," Erik said.

"All of us?" Charles asked.

"All of us." Erik held out his hand to help Charles up.

Charles took it, his smile the most brilliant thing Erik had ever seen. "Then let's go."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, no sketch for this one! But you can personally thank Thacmis and her puppy-eyed begging for Charles not encountering a wayward bullet in this scene.


	9. Chapter 9

The Overseers, Erik knew, would be investigating anyone in his life he called friend or associate, anyone he might have trusted enough to go to for help.

They wouldn't find very many, and Moira MacTaggert would not be on the list. Erik wasn't sure they'd ever had a conversation that didn't end in an eyeroll of contempt. They'd certainly never sought out each other's company.

So her face, when Erik turned up on her back stoop in the middle of the night, had been priceless.

"Evening, Moira," he'd said, unable to keep himself from smirking, however sheepishly. "I seem to recall that one of our many disagreements involved the subject of manikins' rights—specifically your conviction that they ought to have some."

That's when Charles and Raven stepped forward, in all their obviously artificial glory, and Erik thought Moira might faint.

He and Charles were safe now in Moira's basement, a room made cozy and comfortable for guests such as them, with a chess set dug out of a closet somewhere settled between their seats.

"Moira says she'll have it all arranged tomorrow," Charles said, taking Erik's rook with a pawn. "We'll leave Friday, and her friend Irene will collect us on our arrival in Sussex."

Erik nodded thoughtfully, considering the possible movements of a knight. "Who could have suspected there would be so many people, not only willing to offer sanctuary to manikins, but already experienced in doing so?"

"Not you, obviously, my lord Overseer. Napping on the job, you've been." Charles's smile was teasing enough to take the sting out of the fact that he was right, but the smile faded with his next words. "What's truly terrifying is that there's enough of us out there to merit the effort."

"Trask did say Shaw was teaching his tricks to his friends." Erik shuddered, distracted himself by moving the knight.

Charles immediately took it with his queen, and rolled the vanquished knight in his hands, its hard surface clicking against wooden flesh. "Erik… you had little choice but to flee with us, but that doesn't mean you have to continue to… that is, you have every right to go your own way, Raven and I don't expect you—"

"Charles, I thought we'd settled this. I'm staying with you."

"But who knows what's going to happen to us? There's no reason for you to get caught up in the mess, you'd be immensely safer on your own—"

"You said, once, that you and Raven and... the others like you... that you were my brothers and sisters, on the other side of the wall."

"Yes," Charles whispered.

"I want to meet my family. And do whatever I can to help them."

Some hopeful hint of a smile played around Charles's mouth, crinkling the gold veins of his repairs.

"Anyway, stop doing that." Erik put out a hand to catch the knight, still nervously clicking in Charles's hands. "If you're going to fret over a chess piece, you need this one." From his pocket he pulled the battered black king he'd found on the carpet of his workroom just as they rushed out the door.

Charles gasped. "I thought I'd lost that—I told myself it didn't matter, now that I had you back again, but oh, I missed it—" He reached to take it from Erik's fingers, just as Erik reached to hand it to him; they juggled it between them for a moment, nearly dropping it, and stopped, laughing, with their fingers tangled together.

Erik's heart was beating too fast to keep laughing. Gently, gently, he drew Charles's hand closer, and pressed it to his lips.

Charles stared at him, not speaking, and at first Erik didn't know how to take it—but a dizzy, fizzy feeling like champagne bubbles brushed against his mind, making it clear Charles was not horrified but excited beyond belief—literally unable to believe it—and the hand in his was trembling from eagerness and joy.

Erik stood, pulling Charles to his feet, and kissed him.

He already knew he didn't care about the irregularities of Charles's body—he was no doll, his soul as whole and beautiful and human as Erik's own, whatever it was housed in—but still he was surprised by how natural Charles's mouth felt against his, warm and soft and shivery, not like porcelain at all. Perhaps these things had their own magic, he thought absently—hadn't they spoken of it before, natural magic, the force that had created Charles as he was now—

Charles still couldn't stand very well for long periods; they fell backward into Erik's chair, Charles warm and eager in his lap, his fingers in Erik's hair. It didn't occur to Erik then that the hot tingling rush along his every nerve had to do with anything but Charles, and maybe he was right, in a way.

Erik only realized something had happened when a handful of Charles's hair came away in his hand.

In the next moment, he realized he could no longer feel the metal of Charles's spine. He pushed Charles back, examining him in sharp, bewildered alarm.

But Charles's expression was full of wonder, not fear, as Erik ran his fingertips over the places where his skin had been held together with magic and gold.

Places that were now faded away, only faint scars on rosy, perfect human skin.

Charles looked at his hands, no longer ball-jointed wood but living flesh, and ran them over his face, his shoulders, his chest. Brushed one through his patchy hair, which fell out in all directions, all of it suddenly obviously, unbearably false against real skin. Shyly Erik touched his bald head; it was already prickly with new growth, real hair replacing artificial.

Smiling in disbelief, Charles pulled away to stand and spin around, looking down at himself—only to stumble, his legs as uncooperative as ever, and fall laughing back into Erik's lap.

"Charles…?" Erik struggled to wrap his mind around what he was seeing.

_Still me, Erik,_ Charles whispered in his mind, and pressed Erik's hand against his chest to feel the real, human heart beating there.

"How did this happen?" Erik asked hoarsely.

"Natural magic." The memory of their conversation seemed to radiate through the room. _Spontaneous, uncontrollable… The magic of sunrise, a child's first laugh, true love's kiss…_

"True love's kiss." Erik thought, nonsensically, that he might cry, even as he smiled wide enough to hurt. "It does what it does, regardless of any wizard's directions."

"True love?" Charles's face looked so  _different,_ but still perfect and incredible and  _him._ The hope and joy in his eyes was more beauty than Erik knew what to do with.

"True love." Erik's reply came out as a whisper, but he hoped his actions, as he pulled Charles close to kiss him again and again and again, spoke louder than any words.


End file.
